Nashville's 'last castle' gets some love

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A guard looks in on one of nine condemned inmates who wait on death row at the Tennessee State Prison in Nashville on April 20, 1962. Behind the steel door at the far end of the "last mile" is the 2,500-volt electric chair.
Jimmy Ellis / The Tennessean

The top floor of this new control point building in front of the Tennessee State Prison, shown May 3, 1962, is to be a guard station. The ground floor is to be the main entrance, where all people are searched.
Frank Empson / The Tennessean

The first woman guard at Tennessee State Prison, Helen Jones, right, talks over the prison population with fellow guard R.J. Colliers on May 3, 1962. These two are to search all people entering the prison.
Frank Empson / The Tennessean

James Summers, center, minister of music at Park Avenue Baptist Church in Nashville, leads a capacity congregation of 410 inmates in singing at the new Tennessee State Prison chapel Dec. 8, 1963.
Bill Preston / The Tennessean

Gov. Winfield Dunn, center, carries the daughter of a Tennessee State Prison inmate while several other children walk with him during the governor's visit to the prison's picnic area Sept. 10, 1972. At Dunn's immediate right is prison deputy warden Robert Morford.
Dale Ernsberger / The Tennessean

James Earl Ray, left, convicted assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King, is led from a cell block at the Tennessee State Prison on April 26, 1973, by Assistant Deputy Warden James Vandever after Ray consented to a television interview, his first since he was jailed in 1968. Ray complained of leading a "cave dweller's existence" in solitary confinement at the prison. He charged that Tennessee prison officials told him he would be kept in solitary confinement until he abandons efforts to obtain a new trial.
Robert Johnson / The Tennessean

"Inmate" David Everett and "guard" Tommy Barnes eat their TomKats-supplied BBQ buffet lunch while filming "The Green Mile," a movie being shot at the old Tennessee State Prison.
Amanda Saslow / The Tennessean

Johnny Cash and his wife, June Carter Cash, team up in a rousing, close-harmony rendition of their hit "Jackson" for the delighted audience, the inmates at Tennessee State Prison in Nashville on Dec. 14, 1968.
J.T. Phillips / The Tennessean

More than 1,500 inmates at Tennessee State Prison in Nashville applaud, whistle and yell for "more" from singer Loretta Lynn on Dec. 23, 1970. The Kentucky coal miner's daughter said she enjoyed doing the show for those who are behind bars because Christmas is so bleak for most of them.
Frank Empson / The Tennessean

Sonny James records an album with inmates at the Tennessee State Prison in Nashville on March 30, 1977. The singer said this accomplished something he has "wanted to do for a long time."
Robert Johnson / The Tennessean

Officials from the Tennessee State Prison, left, greet The Jordanaires quartet, center, and the band as they arrive for worship service attended by about 1,100 inmates on Dec. 10, 1961.
Jimmy Ellis / The Tennessean

A tame deer learns it way around the Tennessee State Prison on March 23, 1973, after it was brought to Nashville from Brushy Mountain State Prison after it was closed. The deer fell over the wall into Brushy Mountain and was injured. The convicts took care of it as a pet.
Jack Corn / The Tennessean

This is the view of the Tennessee State Prison, where a group of inmates took three counselors hostage April 7, 1975. The counselors were released about eight hours later after corrections officials promised to look into the inmates' grievances.
Jimmy Ellis / The Tennessean

Few folks heading up the hill on Briley Parkway in West Nashville fail to comment on the dramatic building on the right side of the highway. Newcomers and visitors inevitably ask, “What is that castle?”

The question reflects the informal name that Nashvillians bestowed on the Tennessee State Penitentiary when the city eventually enveloped the state’s central prison. The prison opened in 1898, but it was decades before the Cockrill Bend area yielded its rural nature. The prison became untenable for its original purpose and was closed in 1992, though parts of the massive building are used for storage purposes.

Almost as soon as the prison was closed, speculation began on how “The Castle” and its 120-acre property could be repurposed. While dreamers envisioned how the property could be used, movie and television producers were renting it for productions, including “Nashville,” “Marie,” “Ernest Goes to Jail,” “Against the Wall,” “The Green Mile” and “The Last Castle.”

Now, with the Metro Council settling into its second 100 days, the building has new advocates as The Tennessean’s Joey Garrison wrote about last week.

Metro Councilwoman Mary Carolyn Roberts, whose district includes Cockrill Bend, thinks it is time to make something happen, and has lofted the idea that a combination of Metro and private investment could turn more than drivers’ heads.

Roberts toured the prison last week with council members Jeremy Elrod, Mina Johnson, Kathleen Murphy and John Cooper, as well as Metro Historical Commission Executive Director Tim Walker and Joseph Woodson, the mayor’s office's new liaison to the council.

“It’s just a gem waiting,” she said, noting that the state has done virtually nothing with the building in nearly 25 years. “I just think it would be a real shame if we look up and we don’t do something to save it.”

The prison was built for about $500,000 (about $15 million in today’s currency) and is riddled with asbestos and other issues. Renovation and repurposing would be expensive.

But it is a castle

Robert Redford, as former Lt. Gen. Eugene Irwin in “The Last Castle,” described the building well:

“Take a look at a castle. Any castle,” the imprisoned general said.

“Now break down the key elements that make it a castle. They haven't changed in a thousand years. 1. Location. A site on high ground that commands the territory as far as the eye can see. 2. Protection. Big walls, walls strong enough to withstand a frontal attack. 3. A garrison. Men who are trained and willing to kill. 4. A flag.

“You tell your men you are soldiers and that's your flag. You tell them nobody takes our flag. And you raise that flag so it flies high where everyone can see it. Now you've got yourself a castle. The only difference between this castle and all the rest is that they were built to keep people out.

“This castle is built to keep people in.”

‘Abandon all hope …’

When prisoners arrived, they “passed under a large sign that loomed overhead, stating ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,’ a jarring reminder that they were the property of the state for the foreseeable future,” wrote Yoshie Lewis and Brian Allison in the introduction to their book, “Tennessee State Penitentiary.”

The inmates may have abandoned hope, but the dramatic nature of the building continues to entice others such as Roberts.

Lewis and Allison summed up the challenge well, “Its form speaks of an artistry that is long lost today, when even so functional a building as a prison should display such elegance.”

But they, and other critics, also raise the question, “Why should a place of such sadness, misery and pain be remembered at all?”

I hope Roberts and her fellow council members continue exploring the opportunities.